


Make A Name For Yourself

by bdiddy150 (dismalspacenoodle)



Category: 18th & 19th Century CE RPF, Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: (?), Angst, Bittersweet, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character(s) of Color, Duelling, Happy Ending, Other, Sad, angsty ending, who is one of our founding fathers, yolo i say to myself as I write fanfiction about a pasty white dude
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 19:54:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7587733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dismalspacenoodle/pseuds/bdiddy150
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The name "Hamilton" stings on its way out, reminds him of the pitying looks and the bruises and the sick and the failures and promises to himself that he will make the name Hamilton the greatest name the world has ever known. </p><p>OR:</p><p>Forty-nine years of carving a life of diamond out of a lump of unforgiving coal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make A Name For Yourself

Alexander is seven years old. He is old enough to understand why the children in his little town snicker and call him a bastard child, why the ladies down the block sneer at his mother behind her back or, even worse, cast pitying looks at her and Alexander, muttering about "that damn James Hamilton came and knocked up poor Rachel, you know, down the block, with the chatty kid?" He understands why the mothers nudge their kids towards him, telling them to "play nice", he understands why the first thing those children do when their mothers are out of earshot is call him names and push him to the ground.  
He runs home to his mother, sobbing and hanging onto her skirt, and she kneels down and lifts up his chin and presses a quill into his hand and says, "Lexie, you take this pen and you write and you can do anything you can dream of."   
The boys down the street tease him, pull at his long hair and call him a "sissy bitch", a "girly girl", "Lexie the pretty bastard".   
Alexander asks his mother to cut his hair and call him Alexander. 

Alexander is ten years old. He is shivering and pale and wondering why he isn't dead. The stench is overwhelming, the vomit no one has bothered to clean up pooling up by their feet and his mother can't even stand or reach for water but she is clutching him like he is her lifeline.   
He wasn't enough.   
They found him, barely alive and sobbing and holding onto his mother and weakly shaking her shoulders but she was gone and never coming back.   
He never let his hair be cut shorter than his shoulders after that. 

Alexander is eleven years old, but he tells the man-- his mother's landlord-- he is thirteen. He tells the man he can write, read, clerk, do anything he would need to do.   
The man is Nicolas Cruger. He gives him the job.   
Three years later, Cruger is so impressed by the writings of Alexander that he and a group of locals raise funds to pay for a passage on a ship for Alexander. 

Alexander is seventeen years old, shaking and cold and terrified in the winds of a hurricane and he couldn't seem to die. The gale rips apart the homes of the people he knew, the waters rising and attacking and Alexander can't seem to die. 

Alexander is nineteen years old, excitedly telling a man-- the bursar of Princeton-- of his dreams. The man shoots him a look, a pitiful look, and it reminds Alexander of the looks the women back on Nevis gave him when he told them he would go to America and change the world.  
He doesn't hesitate to break the man's nose with his fist.   
He runs to town, seeks out a man named Aaron Burr-- he had heard the name floating around almost like a legend, and now the man was here and Alexander was here and he stuck his hand out and said, "my name is Alexander Hamilton, at your service, sir," and the name "Hamilton" stings on its way out, reminds him of the pitying looks and the bruises and the sick and the failures and promises to himself that he will make the name Hamilton the greatest name the world has ever known. 

Alexander is twenty years old and staring into the face of venerated Virginian general George Washington, the man who was the front of not only the revolution but of America, and all he could say was, "your excellency, sir". The man-- hardly a man but a legend, a god among mortals-- asks him to be his right hand man, and Alexander once again takes the pen being pressed into his hand and promises to change the world.   
He refuses to let the man call him son, because his father was not even a man and the general was far above any mere man and his mother died and he couldn't lose the general.   
He begs over and over to join the fight, to lead a battalion, to give his life for his country, and the general tells him that he is needed alive. Tells him that living is much, much harder than dying.   
And when has Alexander ever taken the easier path? 

Alexander is twenty-five when he meets the beautiful Elizabeth Schuyler. In a matter of weeks, he falls hopelessly in love, and proposes to her on the spot. They marry two weeks later. He looks at the woman he has made his wife and knows she is a Hamilton, and knows he has yet to make the name worthy of her excellence and wonder. 

Alexander is twenty-six when he returns to the war, demanding a field command and backed by Lafayette. The general refuses, and after several months, Alexander is sent back to his home.   
Upon arriving, he sees his beautiful Eliza standing in the doorway ready to greet him, arms tightly wrapped around a rounded belly. He tells her over and over she should've told him, and she just shakes her head, saying he needed to meet his son.   
She wasn't ever wrong.

Alexander is twenty-seven when he sees the beautiful blue eyes of his son and writes to the general, refusing to return to the war and denying any pension or retirement funding.   
A few months later, he passes the bar and becomes a lawyer. Despite beginning his career with Aaron Burr, he quickly shoots past the man in both social standing and in his field. His defendants get acquitted with record precision.   
He will find a way to make sure the world never forgets the name Alexander Hamilton, one that won't leave his beautiful wife and son as his father had left him and his mother.   
The same year, he receives a letter from a Mister Henry Laurens, notifying him of the death of his friend and companion, John Laurens.   
He throws himself into his work with reckless abandon, raising through the levels faster than anyone before. He quickly rises from defense attorney to junior New York delegate, fighting for a new constitution and then neutrality in the French and English "war". In eight years, he becomes the first Secretary of Treasury. 

Alexander is thirty-six when a beautiful young woman comes to him, pleading for care, for help, convincing him that her husband has left her and her daughter and begging for any kindness. He gives her thirty dollars and offers to walk her home.  
Instead, he watched her lay back, gently remove his coat and her dress and when she trailed his fingers down his jawline, breathed hot into his ear and asked him to stay, he didn't say no.   
And he didn't for the next year. 

Alexander is thirty-seven when he is confronted with bank statements going back to 1791, a snide voice accusing him of treason.  
Alexander would not let his legacy be "Alexander Hamilton, first secretary of treasury to embellish government funds". He tells the world of his involvement with Miss Maria Reynolds, writes how James Reynolds had blackmailed him for thousands of dollars to keep the scandal "under wraps", and prays he made the right decision.   
Eliza refuses to let him sleep in the bed, brokenly telling him through angry tears that "in clearing your name, you have ruined our lives, Alexander." 

Alexander is forty-six when his bright-eyed boy come running up to him, hands shaking and face alight with excitement, mouth running a mile a minute and Alexander catches "I am a Hamilton with pride" and tears are brought to his eyes because he has made the name Hamilton worth protecting, worth wearing like a medal of honor and not a brand of illegitimacy. He hands Philip a gun and tells him, "make me proud, son", even though he already has made him the happiest and proudest man on this earth.   
Philip never comes back. 

Alexander is forty-nine when he receives a final letter from Aaron Burr -- his first friend, his worst enemy-- after a series of increasingly aggressive missives stating only to meet him at "Weehawken, dawn, guns drawn".   
And Alexander aims his gun towards the sky and stares at the bullet racing towards him and time seems to slow around him.   
And he wonders, is this how it ends? Is this how I die? It was fitting, he supposed, that the first face he saw in America would be the last face he saw in this world, to stare into the face of his hero-turned-friend-turned-adversary, and now a final title to add to the list: his murderer.   
He thought about his legacy, the man who founded America's banks, the man who was shot by Aaron Burr. The proud father of Philip and the loving husband of Eliza. Best friend of John Laurens.   
He thought, we are not defined by what we do in this life, but what those who live on remember of us.   
And he wondered if he had done enough, wondered if he could ever do enough, and as the bullet lodged into his ribs and he bled out, he clutched the hand of whoever was nearest-- it could've been Angelica, it could've been Eliza, it could've been Burr-- and steadily asked, "what is it to be a Hamilton?"   
And he swore till his dying breath (which wasn't far off) that it was Philip's voice whispering in his ear, "it is to die for the wrong thing," it was Angelica gently--for once in her life-- stating that it was "going and giving until you have nothing left to give and everything left to do," and it was Aaron noting in that calm, measured voice, "it is to aim for the heart with words, but for the sky with bullets," and it was Eliza telling him with all the lovely intelligence that had drawn him to her in the first place that "it is to hold the world in your hands and see it as but a pebble."   
And then, it is Laurens, grabbing his hand and pulling a nineteen-year-old Alexander from the bleeding and lifeless forty-nine-year-old Alexander and telling him that to be a Hamilton is to love with more than you have.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this listening to eighties music on the way back from a doctor's appointment...  
> And then spent, like, four hours listening to songs to figure out a title. (And the one I have sucks)  
> It's from a great song, though, London Beckons Songs About Money Written By Machines by Panic! At The Disco.   
> Thank you for reading and please, please leave a comment!!! Even if it's just "wtf u dork i wrote better in third grade" I will know that I am at least as good as you in second grade and that's about what I peg my writing skills at.   
> As always, y'all can message me at lagayette-the-frenchiest-fry on tumblr


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